Homesteading on the indie web - what's changed?

Happy to see this shared on indie hackers as I don't see this argument being discussed enough. This is the most important part of the indie web movement:

"The Internet needs to maintain its decentralized nature and resist consolidations of power lest technological progress gets stymied, data gets lost, hoarded or corrupted, and users get disenfranchised en masse."

As more of our lives and civilizations move online, there must be more objective, clear, and decentralized systems to ensure that humanity isn't exploited for the gain of a few giant corporations that control most of the "regular user's" Internet. It's still the wild west for the most part. Companies can generally do whatever they want because the penalities are so weak in comparison to the tremendous rewards they enjoy.

Via la indie web!

Unpopular opinion: Web3 is an overcomplicated and problematic solution to problems that (in many cases) the Indieweb could have solved. Blockchain is not necessary for decentralization. And simpler is almost always better.

"....brainstorm ideas about how they can help people own and control their online identities."

This is a prescient comment to make back in only 2011, especially with someone like Julian Assange currently being extradited to the United States. He learned the hard way that it's difficult to engage on the internet with people and trust them. Today we know who Chelsea Manning is only because she told an online acquaintance about her involvement with Wikileaks. Turns out the internet wasn't as safe as either of them thought.

There are plenty of stories happening today of people trying to control their lives via the internet and instead finding that actions on the internet leave breadcrumbs (is that why they call it Cookies?) and that can make it hard for people to ever really feel comfortable using it. Even when we use it for mundane activities, like social media, we don't really control everything we put online. We might even be giving up control.

He's talking about second-level domains in 2011 and this trend isn't anywhere near taking off yet. I thought exactly the same as him back then - it made sense for everyone to have their own "home" online - but clearly there's no real benefit to normal users.

I'd say the tendency of acquiring startups is still rife, which I guess goes against the decentralization trend, but there are huge benefits that come with it. I'd argue acquiring startups helps corporate/big-established players improve their capacity to innovate and evolve in a way that's favorable to people - but there are people who have experienced this first-hand and say it's not true. The startup culture changes almost immediately as it becomes absorbed, and from a customer's perspective, they're now a customer of the bigger entity.